City of Ghosts
by Magic Maryse
Summary: The Shadowhunters are faced with a mystery when the bodies of six young women are found within only four weeks. All brutally murdered, all carrying a golden ring with the same strange symbols, and all from a different century. While the Clave is looking for the killer, young Catherine Flynn soon finds out that ghosts are not the danger lurking in the darkness.


**Hi guys!**

 **I'm not sure if this is something you'd like, so please leave me a couple of reviews and tell me what you think. :)**

 **This is the first chapter of a TMI/TID cross-over and we'll meet characters from the 19th century as well as from the 21st century. Some things will be different story-wise (past and future) but it will all be explained throughout the fanfic.**

 **The story follows Catherine Flynn, a 16 year old teenager, as her life gets turned upside down when she meets a stranger on the bus on her way home from school and is haunted by the creepy ghost of an unknown woman.**

 **I hope you guys are interested in reading this and don't forget to review! :)**

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"Well, that was fun," Isabelle said, walking ahead of her brothers with a sunny smile.

Alec gave her an incredulous look. He was covered in mud and blood, and his dark hair hung down in sweaty strips.

"Wading through a chest-deep swamp infiltrated by demons is not my definition of fun, Isabelle," he grumbled. "And I'm not going to be the one explaining what happened to mom."

Isabelle rolled her eyes. "I didn't force you to go in there, Alec. Don't blame it on me."

She gave him a triumphant smile, looking down at herself. Unlike Jace and Alec, Isabelle had somehow managed to evade getting covered in dirt and blood.

"Yes," Jace said sarcastically with an equally sour look on his face. "It's not like you could have told us about an alternative route, being busy with staying clean and all…"

"Boys," Isabelle said. "Evolution has granted you a pair of perfectly functioning eyes. It would indeed be beneficial to both of you to make use of them once in a while."

Neither of them replied as they stepped into a side alley of the street they'd been walking on. It was a dimly lit shortcut to the New York Institute, one they'd always used after a long night of hunting demons, and that was now deserted safe for a lone stray cat that sat next to an old dumpster.

"Wait," said Jace suddenly, holding up a hand.

Alec and Isabelle stopped dead in their tracks, their hands already at their weapons and ready to fight if necessary.

"What is it, Jace?" Alec asked with a low voice. "Did you see something?"

Jace looked around, his golden eyes searching the darkness for any sign of movement. A moment later, he saw a crumpled shape in the far corner of the alley, almost entirely hidden behind another dumpster. Carefully, he stepped closer and drew out his witchlight.

The silvery light of the stone first fell on a pale hand, followed by a wisp of brown hair.

"A dead girl?" Isabelle asked as they rolled away the dumpster and looked down at the pale body of a young woman that lay face down in a puddle of blood.

There were no visible runes on her skin and under normal circumstances, they would have ignored the corpse. Unless the dead was a Downworlder or Nephilim, the Shadowhunters usually let the Mundanes deal with their own crimes and only interfered in extraordinary cases. What made the three of them pause, however, were the unusual clothes the woman was wearing; a dark green dress that might have been beautiful once, but was now soaked in blood and torn at the hem. It was the sort of old-fashioned clothing one would expect to see in the nineteenth century, not in the twenty-first.

Alec bent down and carefully turned the body around.

Isabelle gasped.

Now, with the long brown hair out of the way, they could clearly see her face; or rather where it should have been.

"By the Angel," Isabelle whispered. "What do you think did this to her?"

Jace looked down at the dead body with disgust. Someone or something had sliced off the first half of the skull right before the woman's ears. It was a clean cut, similar to a blade's or axe's.

"I don't know, Iz," he replied. "Does she have anything on her that might tell us who she is?"

Alec nodded and held up a shimmering object; it was a golden ring. Engraved in it were a series of swirling symbols, some of which Jace recognized to be runes.

"Isabelle," he said in a serious tone without looking up. "Fetch Maryse. Tell her that we've found another body."

.

.

Catherine was scared.

It wasn't the first time she'd felt her hairs stand on end while her heart was racing a hundred miles per hour, doing a double skip with every noise her now over-sensitive ears picked up. Her back was pressed against the wall, her blanket drawn up to her chin and her eyes fixed on the closed door next to her bed.

She knew that her mother was only two doors away and would hear her if she cried out for help, but Cat didn't want to wake her. She stayed quiet instead, hoping that the knot of fear in her stomach would dissolve on its own and let her find sleep before dawn.

Like most children, Catherine had also been afraid of the dark and her mother had spent more than a handful of days chasing away the monsters under her daughter's bed and in the closet. As she'd gotten older, Cat had finally learned that there was nothing to be afraid of in her room. That the monsters were, in reality, merely the shadows of tree branches or furniture, and that there was nothing coming out of the darkness either.

A few weeks ago, however, things began to change.

She often had the feeling of being watched, the feeling of no longer being alone in the small apartment she shared with her mother. At times, Catherine thought she saw something, a shadow, move out of the corner of her eyes but when she turned to look, there was nothing there.

Perhaps she was just paranoid after what happened on the first day of January, the day she'd first been afraid of going to sleep – the day she'd learned to fear the dark again.

 _"_ _Coming home late, Catherine, aren't we?" She caught Roxy's husky voice on the stairs. "Happy New Year, kiddo!"_

 _Cat grinned. "Nice to see you, too, Roxy," she said as she hurried past her neighbor as quietly as she could. "Happy New Year!"_

 _Reaching the top of the stairs, Cat drew out her keys and unlocked the door to the apartment. The lights were out, indicating that her mother had decided not to wait up for her to come home in the middle of the night, and Catherine quietly tip-toed past her bedroom to the bathroom, careful not to wake her up._

 _She switched on the lights and closed the door behind her before she began to remove her make-up and get ready for the night. She'd been thinking of taking a shower but seeing as it was already past two o'clock in the morning, she decided that it could wait until the next day. It was not like anybody could see her in the dark anyway._

 _Cat was brushing her teeth when a knock sounded on the bathroom door._

 _"_ _M jus' brushin' my tee', mom," she said over her shoulder._

 _There was another knock, louder and more impatient this time._

 _Cat spit out the foam. "Geez, mom! I'm almost done, just give me a minute!"_

 _She rinsed out her mouth and washed her face, when the knock sounded a third time. Furious, Cat threw the towel she'd been holding into the empty bathtub and opened the door._

 _"_ _I said I'm-" She never finished the sentence when she saw the figure standing in front of her._

 _It was a woman. As pale as a corpse, bony and covered in what looked like wet humus, her dark hair hanging down in dirty strips – and her eyes… black and hollow like two tunnels carved in her skull._

 _Catherine screamed._

Cat had not seen the woman again but the mere memory of the stench of rotten flesh and foul water still haunted her at night. The fear of closing her eyes and waking up to the ghost, spirit or whatever it was kept her awake until the first rays of sunshine illuminated Cat's room.

It had been going on for over two weeks when her mother had decided to put a stop to this nonsense, as she'd called it.

"That's it, Catherine," her mother had said to her one day after yet another sleepless night. "I've been watching this for two weeks now, it is not getting better. We're going to see a psychologist tomorrow and that's final."

Catherine didn't want to tell her mother that her visits to Dr. Greene were a waste of time, that she still felt the presence of someone else in their apartment when the lights went out. She had enough things to worry about in life and Cat didn't want to add another burden to the many her mom was already carrying around, so she kept quiet.

Suddenly, there was a knock at her door; loud and firm.

Catherine's breath quickened. She'd hoped not to hear the sound ever again, not when the sun was so close to rising.

"Please, go away," she whispered pleadingly.

Catherine felt like a mouse that had been cornered by the cat that had been chasing it. She pressed her back even further against the wall, her eyes wide with fear as they remained fixed on the door.

Another knock sounded through the silence of the room, followed by an eerie scratching as if someone tried to claw their way into her bedroom.

"Please," Cat pleaded again, tears forming in her eyes. "Please, just leave me alone!"

She'd never been this terrified in her entire life.

Very slowly, the doorknob began to turn and Cat watched in horror as a pale hand appeared in the door crack, bony fingers silently pushing it open.

"No," she whispered, tears now running down her cheeks as her body trembled underneath the blanket. "No, please, no…"

Paralyzed with fear, Cat watched as the woman soundlessly stepped into her room and turned her hollow eyes toward the girl.

She couldn't move, not even as the ghost stretched out a bony hand and pulled the blanket out of her trembling fingers.

And for the first time in over two months, Catherine let out a shrill, fearful scream.

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 **I'm very interested in knowing what you think of the ghost scenes. I'm not a native speaker, so I don't know if I set the right atmosphere but I can picture it in my head as if I were in Cat's place. I actually got scared writing the scene! LoL But I don't know if it has the same effect on someone who only reads the story. :)**


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